


lies of omission

by cheloniidae



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Pre-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-07 18:43:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10366998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheloniidae/pseuds/cheloniidae
Summary: This is what Shaun learns about the parents he thinks are dead: One, their names were Millie and Christopher Porter. Two, Conrad Kellogg murdered his father for the crime of refusing to hand over his infant son. Three, his mother was kept in stasis as a backup subject, in case Shaun’s cells failed.Four, his mother is still alive.





	

From the moment Shaun learns the word _outsider_ , he knows he is one.

The Institute rarely takes in members from the surface, and the few it selects are chosen for their minds. A particularly promising physicist or botanist or chemist– the Institute plucks them from the Commonwealth and transplants them into a garden where their intellectual pursuits can be nurtured, where the fruits of their work can be harvested for the betterment of mankind. (The fraction of mankind that makes up the Institute, at least.)

Shaun was chosen for a different reason: not the value of his mind, but the value of the untainted polynucleotides inside his cells. A human specimen, a source of stem cells and genetic material. Nothing more. And when the Gen Threes are declared a resounding success, when scientists stop extracting stem cells from the sore spot at the base of his spine, he knows his usefulness is over.

But the Institute keeps him.

He’s ten when he asks the Director – Doctor Helen Rostow, then, a woman who will always loom in Shaun’s memory – why the Institute doesn’t discard him like a normal specimen. Why they don’t throw him back into the Commonwealth, with all its mutants and monsters and raiders and irradiation.

“You’ll have to show us that,” Director Rostow says.

And he does.

* * *

_“The Institute rescued you, Shaun.”_

_“Yes, Director Rostow.”_

* * *

Inside the Institute, people wear their loyalties in a language of colors. Red as bright as artificial blood for Robotics, green as soft as leaves for BioScience, blue as striking as an electric arc for Advanced Systems, black as dark as the cover of night for the SRB. Only two kinds of people are colorless: children and the Director. Those too young to choose a Division, and the one person who must be loyal only to the Institute itself.

Shaun is thirty-four years old, and Director Nila Clarke is holding out a coat as white as the Institute’s walls.

He takes the coat from her delicately, gently, as though his future is woven in its threads. He finds himself surprised by how unsurprised he is, how _right_ the coat feels in his hands. He’s sharpened his mind to a knifepoint on the grindstone of his drive to prove the Institute was right to keep him, and that edge has a single purpose: the betterment of his adopted home. No one in the Institute has worked, studied, sacrificed more for its sake than he has.

_Director Lowell,_ he thinks, and it sounds like a puzzle piece fitting into place.

“I’ve already told the Directorate,” Nila says. A proud smile flits across her face, teeth flashing like lights in the darkness. And with a touch of wry humor: “You can imagine how pleased they were.”

“Two Directors from Robotics in a row? It's a wonder they didn’t mutiny.”

“And an old student of mine, no less. Don’t count them out; they might revolt yet.” She means it as a joke — the Directorate hasn’t forced out a Director in over thirty years — but it sticks in Shaun’s brain. Another reason for others to doubt him, something he’ll have to quash before it can take root.

“I can handle them.” 

“I’m not the one you have to convince, am I?” she asks. “Good luck. Every Director needs it, but I think you’ll need less than most.”

* * *

_“Why does everybody have a last name but me, Director?”_

_“Because your parents never gave you one.”_

_“Can I pick one?”_

_“I don’t see why not.”_

* * *

He formally accepts the position in a speech to the Directorate, one he practices and practices a hundred times. Nila, as promised, is nowhere to be seen; the room seems bare without her. Shaun feels the same question burning in all the gazes trained on him: _Why you? Why not me?_

But those questions are familiar ground for Shaun; he knows how to face them, how to answer them. He lays out his plans for the Institute like a proof, meticulous and thorough. And the point underscoring every line: _I was the right choice._

He’ll make them see. He has no alternative.

Afterwards, the Division heads congratulate him on becoming the youngest Director in living memory. They forget that he was born in a world before theirs, that he’s older in calendar years than any of them. Or, if any do remember, they don’t care to point it out.

Shaun knows where he belongs.

(He’s the first Director since the Founder herself to be born outside the Institute, and the fact pricks at him like a needle.)

* * *

_“Well, have you decided?”_

_“Lowell. Like the Founder, since… since the Institute is my family, right?”_

_“That’s exactly right, Shaun.”_

* * *

With the Directorship comes access to every classified file, every encrypted log entry, every note meant only for a Director’s eyes. Some documents he has seen before, covered in redactions; others he has heard rumors of; still more he never would have guessed existed. He tamps down on his horror at the continuing FEV project, gives the file on alien technology an incredulous second read. Knowledge is the greatest weapon, as the Founder once said, and Shaun reads all of them.

All but one.

_Project Mendel_ , the title reads. Its description: _The acquisition of a non-contaminated genetic base for the production of synthetic organics._

* * *

_“What happened to my parents?”_

_“The surface is a cruel, dangerous place. They didn’t survive.”_

* * *

The terminal’s cursor hovers over the file name, blinking like a judgmental eye. It’s been five days since he found the file, and Shaun still can’t make himself hit enter.

He has always suspected that Director Rostow, and Director Clarke after her, hid things from him. But before now, before the file, those worries were confined to the dark hours of the Institute’s artificial day-night cycle. They were an itching scab that he’d long since learned to stop picking at. Any concern for his past is a distraction from his work, from the now, and Shaun has never let himself be less than focused.

But curiosity is the one drive that everyone within the Institute shares.

He reads the file, and the air in his quarters goes cold.

This is what Shaun learns about the parents he never met, the parents he thinks are dead, the parents he hasn’t thought of in five years: One, their names were Millie and Christopher Porter. (His birth name glows on the monitor in harsh shades of green, listed on the Vault 111 roster: _Shaun Porter, one year old._ ) Two, Conrad Kellogg murdered his father for the crime of refusing to hand over his infant son. Three, his mother was kept in stasis as a backup subject, in case Shaun’s cells failed.

Four, his mother is still alive.

* * *

_“Don’t cry, now. The Institute will keep you safe.”_

_“Yes, Director.”_

* * *

_Shaun Porter._ The name echoes in his mind as his feet follow the familiar path to Nila’s laboratory. He tries to focus on the syllables, the sound of a name his parents never had the chance to call him by, and it still isn’t enough to drown out the chorus of _they lied, they lied, they lied_ crawling under his skin.

He enters without knocking, the automatic doors sliding open for the man they recognize as Director. The lab is, as always, in disarray: papers scattered everywhere, beakers and flasks and notebooks and pens covering the counters. But Nila Clarke is a genius even by Institute standards, and no one who works with her for long can mistake the seeming chaos for disorganization. A system is at work, even here.

Nila herself is at her whiteboard, too engrossed in equations to notice Shaun’s entrance. Another accusation piles up on his tongue with every heartbeat that pounds through his head like a drum. _They lied._ He doesn’t know what he's looking for, not really– answers, an apology, or just a confession that she hid the truth from him. (The confirmation of his fears hurts more than seeing _deceased_ written next to his father’s name.)

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Shaun demands, loudly enough to catch her attention.

Nila turns from the whiteboard, marker in hand, confusion clouding her face. Understanding clears it away in an instant. “You read the Mendel file,” she says. “I was wondering when you would.”

“How long did you know my mother was alive?” Speaking it makes it feel real for the first time; the fact is a leaden weight, as heavy as a life unlived. His mother is alive. His mother is alive.

“I didn’t know about the backup until Helen appointed me as Director.” ( _Ten years,_ Shaun thinks. _You knew for ten years._ ) “By then, what good would telling you have done? You had a new name, your doctorate, a life inside the Institute. You hadn’t asked about your parents since you were a child. Running Robotics was hard enough on you without waking up old ghosts.”

“I had a right to know!”

Nila shakes her head, unfazed. “You didn’t have any right.” Her voice is gentle, a kindly tone that says she knows he’s wrong and forgives him for it. “Our Founder was correct to call knowledge a weapon; the Director’s duty is to regulate it, inside the Institute and out. I made a call that telling you was the worst option for you and the Institute. I stand by that.”

“Then why leave the file for me to find? You knew I would read it.”

“If I thought you were too unintelligent to notice a missing file, I wouldn’t have chosen you to replace me, would I?” The glint of humor vanishes from her face as quickly as it appeared. “No. The Director has to know everything. We don’t have the luxury of shielding our eyes; we have to see things _exactly_ as they are. Do you understand?”

Shaun has seen Nila work thirty hours straight to meet a deadline, but he's never seen her look more tired than she does now. He thinks about every classified file, every record of collateral damage (so many more than his father), all the things that must be done in the dark to keep the Institute powered and progressing and safe. The cost of their prosperity.

He understands, and he hates that he does.

His anger drains like an open buret, leaving him feeling small, childish, the way he did as a sixteen-year-old doctoral student being lectured on laboratory safety. “You lied to me,” he says, quietly, because it demands to be spoken.

“I know I did. And you’ll lie to people, too, when you have to. It comes with the job.” Nila brushes her hands together the way she always does when she’s glad something is over, as though dusting off the argument’s debris. “What are you going to do, now that you know she’s alive?”

“What?”

“Your mother. You could wake her up, if you wanted to. You’re the Director.”

Shaun considers it, silence hanging heavy in the air. He could unthaw Millie Porter, his last connection to the boy listed on Vault 111’s roster. And what would she think, the woman who last saw her son as an infant, the woman who saw her husband killed by an agent of the Institute?

(Christopher Porter is listed as _collateral damage_ , not a casualty.)

Shaun tries to picture his mother’s face, recall her voice, but he has no memories of her. Only a centuries-old file and the chromosomes he inherited, weighed against decades of building a life for himself. Weighed against the responsibility resting on his shoulders.

“There's no logical reason to wake her,” Shaun says.

Relief shines in Nila’s eyes, and he wonders if this was his first test as Director.

* * *

Twenty-six years later, in the wake of a terminal diagnosis, Shaun finds a reason.


End file.
